The apocalypse is sponsored by... PEPSI

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2011)

First of all: this is a nice movie and I would certainly recommend it. As sort of a British version of "I am Legend" it surpasses it's American counterpart by far. However, the amount of product placement in this movie is worse than in all James Bond movies combined.
SPOILER ALERT! After the title of the movie appears on screen we see a guy waking up in a deserted hospital. The title implies he has been laying there for 28 days so he is understandably thirsty. Fortunetely for him there are dozens of PEPSI cans laying around in front of a PEPSI machine. This advertisement is by no means subliminal, but I hoped the director thought: let's get it over with in the first five minutes of the film. How wrong can one be.
The guy, Jim, strolls out of the hospital onto the empty streets of London. It shows some beautiful images of all the famous landmarks completely deserted. The desolate feeling is intensified by a dramatic score, but when he picks up a newspaper in order to find out what has happened, we unfortunately see another can of PEPSI.
He has his first encounter with zombie-like creatures (called "the infected") and is saved by two survivors who take him to their hide-out, filled with PEPSI cans and a big PEPSI poster on the wall. They team up to check out Jim's parents' house where the female lead Selena takes a PEPSI out of the cupboard, and when Jim can't climb a stair, Selena accredits it to lack of sugar, not just handing him a PEPSI but actually naming it. And this is just thirty minutes in!
I understand filmmaking is a costly business, but there has to be a way of financing it without constantly showing PEPSI, Nescafe, Kellogs, The National Lottery, Heinz, Maltesers, PEPSI, Mars, PEPSI and PEPSI (just to name a few)